‘At night all cats are black,” says André Saraiva, lightly mangling the French proverb “La nuit tous les chats sont gris.” Forty-year-old Saraiva should know: he spent his formative years in Paris—where he also became known as the graffiti artist Mr. A, who tagged 5,000 of the city’s yellow mailboxes—at Les Bains Douches, the famous club fronted by a formidable lesbian named Marilène. This turns out to be time well spent; Saraiva runs a string of Le Baron nightclubs in Paris, London, Tokyo, and, now, deep in New York’s Chinatown. With the aspect of a Charlie Chan opium den—racy Chinese calligraphic figures and sinister black-lacquered octopus sconces abound—Saraiva’s black-and-red Le Baron is in part tribute to the Beatrice Inn, the now shuttered West Village club he ran a few years ago with D.J. Paul Sevigny. “I like places where people and communities come together,” he says simply, “and I always like to do things that involve friends, artists, and musicians.” Saraiva makes films (The Shoe, with girlfriend Annabelle Dexter-Jones), exhibits his art, and owns hotels (Hôtel Ermitage in St. Tropez), and he’s receptive to new inspiration—in this case, pictures by French photographer Dominique Nabokov. If there’s a hint of a Montparnasse dive, so much the better. But the cover of darkness is his first inspiration. “We didn’t start this thing for money or fame,” he explains. “We had a romantic idea of the night—the freedom and anonymity you don’t get during the day.” Besides, he says, with an element of Gallic wistfulness, “I always got my first kisses at night.”